needing to ground; plus I don't know how to use crystals ;)

Firstly: It seems like it would be best to try and ground about now, if I could. I know how to ground psychologically, but so far as energy work goes, I'm so far entirely self-taught (or have been taught by spirits). Leaving aside the question of the accuracy of my spirit perceptions at the time, does anyone have a relatively simple grounding technique or two that could apply to either a nonreligious or Buddhist/Zen-oriented person?

Secondly: I'm not entirely certain why this is, though I have some clue...I've reached a point in my life where I'm pretty much viewing a whole heck of a lot of things as being "alive." Not necessarily biologically; but in the sense of at the very least picking up energy imprints in my stones and crystals, and energy matrixes tied to my fetishes, and of course my little plant.

Anyhow...and I'm here cutting out a good 2/3 of a page of "OMG MY LIFE IS WOO," I'm not sure if this is a symptom of stress or not, but I'm seeing a lot of things to have life (or the potential for life) in them, which wouldn't necessarily seem to be alive to a secular person. Part of this is probably spurred on by my recognizing Shang, finally, as an actual being separate from my own, with her own person, life, and history. And then there was Snakey's help at Christmas and New Year's. And then there was a co-worker's relative who recently died...

I'm not really one for astrology in general, but: is there some alignment of the planets, or something else majorly affecting spiritual reality, going on right now? Or do certain energy currents align once one reaches a certain age? Or do you think my studying energy work and out-of-body stuff is aligning me with some current which is causing an accelerated evolution?

...or is someone helping me long-distance? Thanks, if that's the case. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->

I originally started writing this entry thinking about energetic tools. Particularly, crystals. I have a lot of them, but I don't know how to use them, say, in meditation or energy work yet. I know how to clear them and I think I know how to charge them (though the latter is probably a pretty unfocused thing, given my self-rated skill level at the moment). But how to use them? I don't really know. I've gotten the hint that a lot of what's said about specific crystals is likely consumerist jibjab.

Part of it seems to be imprinting on the crystal what a crystal suggests to one. And suggestions come partially because of one's culture, and partially because of the energy that crystal emits. But the energy the crystal is emitting could be because of someone else's culturally-based imprint, you know? Or it could be because matter is inherently intelligent and crystals, being self-ordering, are a clear conduit to Spirit.

Still, though...well, maybe they seem alive because I've charged them for so long...I just don't know what to do with them. I do have a Jasper that seemed upset or angry, when I got the spontaneous urge to go through my mineral collection. It's been clearing for a while now...I haven't checked on it yet. But after even just getting warm in the sun, it felt a lot better. And I've done an incense clearing of my room, though I'm not sure I used an appropriate incense.

The quartzes are what I'm harmonizing most with, currently. I have them, I have a sense that they're trying to tell me something, that they want to help me, but I don't entirely know how to access them or interface with them in their language. I feel not so great having these potential tools at my fingertips and not knowing how to use them.

And...I need to go, I just got a sudden wave of exhaustion, which means that shortly I won't be able to think well.

I sympathize with the feeling of accelerated personal development and awareness-gain... it happened to me about a year back.
I also sympathize with perceiving 'life' in visibly nonbiological things. For me, it's a tiny pocket knife, a compact mirror, a pendulum I crafted from some obsidian and hematite I had handy, and assorted other easily-portable smallish things. They're all tied to different feelings and 'meanings' for me, with a pretty much unspoken purpose or task associated with each. When it comes to grounding, I think of it basically as centralizing my energy along an axis through my body, and making contact with the sympathetic energy of the earth under my feet.

If you're wanting a nonreligious way for it, I'd suggest either or both of my two favourite methods.
1. Induce kuzushi in yourself. Kuzushi has a double meaning... a) in combat, the art of unbalancing your opponent to gain the advantage, b) in zen, inducing a state of temporary imbalance in yourself, and then as quickly as possible righting that imbalance, as a way to practice and prepare for the situation of being taken by surprise.
One way to do it is to study a zen koan like "why is a mouse when it spins?"
Basically, do something that confuses you or scares you a very little, harmless bit, and then force yourself to react to it without resorting to your intellect. Thinking slows the process of reaction, when generally instinct and fight-or-flight responses are already programmed to handle the situation.
In addition to basically pushing your brain's reset button, it grounds your energy and puts your spiritual self in a state of "absolute potential", a kinda' starting point for whatever you plan to do next, with all your resources gathered and inventoried.

2. Visualize your body's blood vessels as being filled with fluid light. Starting from the soles of your feet and the tips of your toes, visualize the light slowly moving upward through your body, toward the crown of your head. Keep doing this until all that light has gathered in one spot, retreated to the top of your head, and then direct it from there as pleases you. When insomnia is bad for me, I imagine the light pouring out of me from the top of my head, as though my consciousness itself is working its way out of my mind. When I need to settle ruffled nerves and get my energy harnessed in a steady way, I redirect the light straight down through my feet until it 'bounces' against the sympathetic energy in the ground.

As for crystals... most of mine are part of jewelry. I charge them in advance with a set emotion or energy, something in co-operation with their own sympathetic characteristics, and then I wear them when I anticipate I'll want to draw back on that charge.
Aside from that, I don't employ them much, so... maybe better to ask another, for that part.

Dunno' if these will do you any good, but I hope so. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

Hi. Thanks! <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

Estelore Wrote:I also sympathize with perceiving 'life' in visibly nonbiological things. For me, it's a tiny pocket knife, a compact mirror, a pendulum I crafted from some obsidian and hematite I had handy, and assorted other easily-portable smallish things. They're all tied to different feelings and 'meanings' for me, with a pretty much unspoken purpose or task associated with each. When it comes to grounding, I think of it basically as centralizing my energy along an axis through my body, and making contact with the sympathetic energy of the earth under my feet.

Interesting. I'm noticing the thread of metallic objects running through your examples (for those who don't know, hematite is an iron ore). My godmother has said that metals...I forget her exact words, but essentially, they pick up energies easily. I recall some years back, her saying to be careful who one buys metals from, because of this. I'm not entirely sure why this would be, unless it has something to do with the amount of refinement put into it...or its tendency for conductivity.

I've questioned whether the same applies to other intensely hand-wrought work such as lampwork glass...or what I make. I've gotten to the point where I've started buying jewelry-making supplies from people who I can feel are positive, or at least, not so toxic as to cause me to question whether I want to support them...

When you say "sympathetic energy", do you mean energy in concordance with your own? Sympathetic energy...like, to take an example from something I read recently...the idea of a being who resides in one of the six lower "worlds" of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, only being able to see other spirits who also reside in that "world", even though beings from all the other worlds are also occupying the same space? (Pretty sure that was from the beginning of the Psychic Energy Codex by Belanger.) That is...one would make contact with energy that is similar to one's own, even though multitudes of different energies would occupy the same space?

Estelore Wrote:2. Visualize your body's blood vessels as being filled with fluid light. Starting from the soles of your feet and the tips of your toes, visualize the light slowly moving upward through your body, toward the crown of your head. Keep doing this until all that light has gathered in one spot, retreated to the top of your head, and then direct it from there as pleases you. When insomnia is bad for me, I imagine the light pouring out of me from the top of my head, as though my consciousness itself is working its way out of my mind. When I need to settle ruffled nerves and get my energy harnessed in a steady way, I redirect the light straight down through my feet until it 'bounces' against the sympathetic energy in the ground.

Do you think this would work if I visualized the light beginning at the soles of my feet, the palms of my hands, and my toetips and fingertips? I always got confused trying to figure out how to direct the energy when I'd get to hip level or shoulder level. But I think this might work well for me, if done lying on one's back and doing the visualization with this modification, unless there's a specific reason to work off a bipedal model. <!-- s:razz: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":razz:" title="Razz" /><!-- s:razz: --> I think I'll try it this way, and see how it works. Thanks for the idea!

This is also being fed into by the idea that the soles of the feet and palms of hands are energy-exchange sites, as mentioned in Astral Dynamics. The palms are also used in the first exercise of The Psychic Energy Codex.

Estelore Wrote:As for crystals... most of mine are part of jewelry. I charge them in advance with a set emotion or energy, something in co-operation with their own sympathetic characteristics, and then I wear them when I anticipate I'll want to draw back on that charge.
Aside from that, I don't employ them much, so... maybe better to ask another, for that part.

<!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s --> Yes, I've had these crystals for so long that I'm pretty sure they're mostly imprinted with my energy by now. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> Which is how I could tell the Jasper's energy apart. The stone was in the same dark box with a little resin-encased beetle...though all the rest of my stones were, too (sans the fetishes). I do wonder if there is a connection. I think I ended up charging the beetle last night with ...the thoughts were "respect and compassion," though it wasn't fully...conscious. I just held onto it while trying to figure out how to make amends for its mistreatment, and could feel the difference afterwards.

Then I put the beetle in the sunlight to see if that would help, though there's the chance that the light would clear the charge.

I have a little more than half a mind to go outside and bury it. I have another beetle too, but it doesn't give off nearly the same energy.

Okay, tangent. <!-- s:razz: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":razz:" title="Razz" /><!-- s:razz: --> Maybe I should start a thread on psychometry or something. ^_^;;

Yeah, so...I was writing the other night and looked over to a nearby bookshelf for books published by Weiser Press. And what did I see?

Healing With Crystals and Gemstones by Daya Chocron. Yes. All right.

I then opened the book to a page and quotation which was fairly inspiring, though I tried to read this book last night and was just struck by the amount of facepalmy things said within. And I have barely even started the first chapter. The facepalms mostly came in the Introductions, plus the first page of the first chapter. Whereupon I decided to go to sleep.

Ahhh...

Well. With the entire thing happening over in Japan...I've been concerned about...well, nuclear stuff. Particularly, fallout and contamination.

I did pick up a Smoky Quartz out of my treasure box last night, which I'm now in the process of clearing (I had a lot of pain last night). What I didn't realize or recall clearly until today is that Smoky Quartz is colored by nuclear radiation. So maybe there could be some productive dialogue, there.

I suppose that part of the benefit to seeing life in crystals is that even if everything biologically alive dies, the Earth will still be here. And it may be tens of thousands of years before anything can grow again. But tens of thousands of years, isn't forever. It's not even close to forever. In the life of a mineral...it's a snapshot.

And in the life of a sun, it's even less than that.

Shang has been telling me, "Trust." If it's true that we can see our incarnations fully before we enter into them...then that means that even if we do get a radiation plume, and this life ends, I'm still exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I must admit to uncertainty that there is anything I can do that will stop this. Along with fear of trying to help, because I don't know what I'm getting into, and I don't know how to help. But even if we can't stop this...

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if this got people to look at alternatives to energy production, besides nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Plus...maybe then I could attain a human male form. Or Shang and I...maybe we could go someplace. Maybe I could see her, and know she's real.

I'm being called away, but I wanted to say that...it helps me, to look at attempting to have a plan if everything goes wrong. Others have been telling me not to think about this.

I'm not good at living entirely in the moment. I look ahead. And the future is uncertain, but at the same time; we know that there is contamination. We know there is going to be environmental impact. We know things are going to die because of cataclysm combined with both human stupidity (like purifying fissive materials) and human error (like not making reactors so that they can be easily dismantled in case of emergency).

I'm trying to put this out of mind...but if I can't put it out of mind, the least I can do is try and find the positive.

I've got to go.

I'll start from the most recent stuff, and work my way backwards:
Unless you're right on the premises of the plants in Japan, and as long as you aren't outdoors during rain that has crossed that way for at least another handful of days, you aren't personally in any real danger.

The explosions that have occurred there didn't send anything into the upper atmosphere, which means basically that any radioactive material is going to settle down to earth pretty close to the site of the explosion. Prevailing winds can kick up a little bit of that, and it can get carried in rain that passes over that area... but after a few days and a second rain (or snow), the atmospheric threat of the stuff would be completely neutralized past a few miles from the plant site.

This isn't Chernobyl. They aren't even the same type of reactor system; the destruction at Chernobyl simply isn't possible from the Japanese plant, because they function so differently in terms of how the cooling systems operate (even when there isn't power to those systems).
The amounts of radiation released are also pretty negligible, in the wider scale of things. You would have to sit right next to the explosion for half an hour to experience a sufficient dose to poison you. You would have to take a lonnnng swim in collected rad-saturated rain before it would make a dent on your systems.
Frankly... the media is massively overhyping the situation. "Meltdown" isn't a bad thing; it's the proper term for the correct process of shutting down the plant in an emergency. It has already happened; it happened the day of the earthquake. The media is treating "meltdown" like some not-yet-occurred but impossibly awful thing... and really it's just a standard procedure.
Panic sells papers and gets ratings. It stimulates world economy by causing lots of money to change hands in the name of support.
That doesn't mean there is actually a reason to panic. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->

Nexxxxt...

I handmake a lotta' stuff; I feel that it gets strongly imbued with my energy, yeah.
Sympathetic energy = yeah, in concordance with mine... but also in concordance with whatever task/emotion/purpose I assign for that item or stone.

"Do you think this would work if I visualized the light beginning at the soles of my feet, the palms of my hands, and my toetips and fingertips?"
*nod* Precisely.
As for what to do at shoulders and hips... I kinda' visualize it like a tree growing backwards (old back to youth), with the top of the head being the "seed" and the fingertips and toe tips being the "root tips" or "leaves".
I do consider those extremities to be sites of energy exchange, yes. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

For the resin beetle having problems... something a friend of mine uses, that has worked for me:
get a bit of sand, put it in a tray or bowl, deep enough to cover the object. Place the whole setup under sunlight. The item gets the warmth benefit without having light inflict charge-removal on it. This seems in my experience to be a pretty solid approach for anything that was formerly-biological or bears semblance to something formerly-biological (amber, coal, petrified wood, chalks, coral, hard sponge, any fossil or resin-encased critter).
Salt works, too, but it doesn't feel as... gentle. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->

I'd really like to end up having worried for no reason.

What's happening is that I've been flooded with information whose intent is either to cause, or alleviate alarm that was caused by the same outlets. For about three or four days here, it's been pretty much impossible not to hear something else about the reactors in various stages of decay, if the television or the radio is running. The other night, it seemed that I was flipping stations trying to find something non-alarming (at least one television is normally on when my parents are here, not by my inclination), and I must have gone past seven different newscasts from varying countries, all focused on the reactors or the recovery effort; or people here being alarmed about the reactors (because of all the press on the reactors).

The latter had to do with people being scared enough to go out and buy up potassium iodide tablets -- which means that I'm not the only one alarmed. The problem in my situation is not so much that I have an overt tendency to paranoia, though I have dealt with that; but that I have a low anxiety threshold. Much of the things that I've been concerned about in the past have been actually sourced from data, given which, my concern was understandable. This is even when I've thought I've been just out-and-out paranoid.

And I probably wouldn't be as unsettled as I have been, had I not had a bunch of parapsychological things happen right around this time period. I'm not known for being able to predict the future, for which I'm grateful. It's just that so many strange things have happened, and world events one after another, along with synchronicities and hidden meanings and well-timed fuckups in my personal life (like my medication having given me fairly disturbing side effects since about January, and my realizing this coinciding with the beginnings of an episode; meaning that if I go down on my medications [which I'm beginning to do, and can see the effects already] I risk being thrown back into what secular psychiatry deems "psychosis", and which I see as possibly initiatory illness that I need to gain control over -- whether either or both of those is true or not)...It makes me think something is going on, that I don't know about.

And I think that it's possible that some of my experience in Satanist groups has gotten me to think that really far-gone possibilities can be still likely depending on what timestream one directs oneself down...it's a bit crazymaking. It's not that you fundamentally alter the world, it's that you move yourself into a timestream where something specific happened, or didn't happen. I don't know if you -- or magic users here -- would have advice on whether that's valid or not, or if I should just put it out of my mind.

There's also the possibility of another large earthquake or series of earthquakes, in the Ring of Fire (which I happen to live in), which raises alarm about our own nuclear facilities, should our faults rupture. Though if that happens and the plants here fail, I'm pretty much screwed, no matter what.

Beyond that...there just seems to be a mass confrontation with death going on at this time, and maybe I'm involved because I allowed myself to contemplate and empathize too much. Whereas what I should have been doing was, maybe -- keeping my mental boundaries up and ignoring it? Even though I felt that it was expected of me to empathize, because of my connections. Or that, you know, it's honorable to be in pain out of empathy.

Estelore Wrote:This isn't Chernobyl.

The other night, Michio Kaku was on...some station which I happened to walk in on, and he said that this could become another Chernobyl, in a worst-case scenario -- but there had to be several errors all made in sequence for that to happen. Of course, checking Wikipedia, he's also a String Theorist, which means that he's probably on the fringe as it is. I thought he was local because of regular appearances on a certain science show only shown on public television, but it seems not.

There's also the fact that the Japanese government is playing this down...whereas being somewhat connected to that culture, I know that, for example, if you have stage 4 cancer and are terminal, the doctors will not tell you that you're going to die. They seem to think it's better that you not know. And there is a concept which, in my grandmother's time, they called "saving face." Not admitting to or acknowledging a mistake or fault, because of shame. It happened in World War II.

I'm not sure I have to go further into that. Point is that I'm not really trusting the information coming out of Japan right now as being full disclosure, or the information on US news (which I've tried to stop listening to, unless I can see that it's trying to remediate past damage done by alarmist stories).

But thank you for your efforts. I try to work through distressing things as they come up. *sighs* Just maybe I should wait so I don't say silly things online...they usually burn out after a while. But I do appreciate your caring enough to reply. Even though maybe I'm being annoying. If so, sorry. >_<

Estelore Wrote:For the resin beetle having problems... something a friend of mine uses, that has worked for me:
get a bit of sand, put it in a tray or bowl, deep enough to cover the object. Place the whole setup under sunlight. The item gets the warmth benefit without having light inflict charge-removal on it. This seems in my experience to be a pretty solid approach for anything that was formerly-biological or bears semblance to something formerly-biological (amber, coal, petrified wood, chalks, coral, hard sponge, any fossil or resin-encased critter).
Salt works, too, but it doesn't feel as... gentle. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->

Hmm. Do you know why it works?

Thank you again. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

You don't annoy me remotely. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

Michio Kaku... guh. I saw that interview. I'm not the television-punching kinda' person, but I was damn close to doing it when he started pushing hype. He's lost a considerable volume of my respect. >_< Seriously, comparing this to Chernobyl, ever, is both a severe distortion of the factual information AND an insult to those who lost their lives as a result of the events at Chernobyl.

Of course the Japanese government must talk this down: mass panic doesn't help ANYBODY. No, you can't really trust any single country's media... but of the information being provided, the Japanese government has definitely been the most self-consistent and the most consistent with what I know about nuclear power stations.
Basically, if you are more than ten miles away from the reactor sites, on a day without precipitation, the most protection you need from the latent radiation is ordinary clothing, and when possible, the perfectly ordinary walls of a house or building. Being indoors is about as good a protection as you could need, from something this low-scale.

Quote:And I think that it's possible that some of my experience in Satanist groups has gotten me to think that really far-gone possibilities can be still likely depending on what timestream one directs oneself down...it's a bit crazymaking. It's not that you fundamentally alter the world, it's that you move yourself into a timestream where something specific happened, or didn't happen. I don't know if you -- or magic users here -- would have advice on whether that's valid or not, or if I should just put it out of my mind.

I don't see it as moving myself onto another timestream... I see it more like... everybody wants things, prays for things, desires things, imagines things they'd like to happen, and/or speaks aloud their wishes.
I think all these little wants add up to a series of "reality-nudges". The universe we experience is the summary result of the wishes of all beings living in it. Even if you will yourself into a different reality, so many more people will that reality be contiguous and simple... and it prevents you escaping it to that great a degree. On the other hand, many people could agree with your wishes, and the collective of you could nudge THIS reality toward a result that is closer to what you want.

Umn... does that make sense? XD


Regarding the sand... seems to me, sand contains tiiiiny bits of so many different types of rock, each exerting a little-bitty influence on whatever they're touching. While direct sunlight might 'bleach' the charge out of the object, redirected sunlight on the sand still provides warmth and the benefit of a little bit of light, without the bleaching effect. Something that has been alive is perhaps still sympathetic to the need for warmth, and perhaps it recognizes in the action a will to repair damages done.

Just putting this out there, Chordal? Most people panic when anything comes up about a nuclear reactor not humming along perfectly fine, because all the average person knows about nuclear anything is that there's radiation and radiation kills. That is an extremely narrow view.

First off, the issue in Japan wasn't caused solely by the earthquake, so simply being in the Ring of Fire doesn't mean that a nuclear plant near you will have a problem. The earthquake took out the main power at Japan's nuclear plant in question, and the tsunami took out the back up generator. Both of those systems have fail-safe devices, so under normal circumstances, they wouldn't fail. Which means that you need TWO disasters to cause a total power failure at a nuclear plant.

Secondly, you need to take into account the media. Sensationalism sells. People tune in. People buy newspapers. And the fear that sensationalism generates is used by marketers and suppliers to sell their products. As long as you think the world is ending, they've got you by the balls. So to speak.

All the hype about nuclear radiation and everything is given more power by people who repeat it, not knowing what it is they're talking about. Research it, please. I can almost guarantee you that you'll feel better about it. This isn't Chernobyl, and even if it was? You're safe. You're on the other side of the world. It's cold, I know, but it's true. You're not gonna get radiation poisoning. The most you have to worry about is economic changes due to a world power going to hell.

But like I said. It's not like that. This isn't Chernobyl, it's a completely different situation, years later, and with a different type of reactor, one that is far less volatile.

Re: Estelore.

From Adrian:
My impression was that a meltdown occurs when the fuel rods heat up to such a degree that they melt, then melt a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel and continue down through the crust, eventually hitting the water table and contaminating the groundwater. Under this definition, meltdown did not occur right as the quake struck. Do you have a different definition?

To both of you:
With this recent rain, we're getting the first evidence of radiation hitting our area. It isn't enough to cause much concern, however.

To thetruthbetween:
I'd appreciate people not ganging up on me in order to look more learned.

To both of you:
Also keep in mind that I'm looking at this from a systems perspective -- things being interconnected. The immediate concern is not my entire concern. There are now traces of radiation showing up in Japanese spinach and milk. One of my concerns is how this is going to impact the fishery, though this may not be the same thing as something like mercury, which is collected in the tissues of fish, particularly predatory fish. Another concern is how it's impacting the foodstuffs exported from Japan (which I actually consume a decent amount of).

I think I'll end it there.

EDIT: (grabbed 11:23 PM, PDT)

thetruthbetween Wrote:Just putting this out there, Chordal? Most people panic when anything comes up about a nuclear reactor not humming along perfectly fine, because all the average person knows about nuclear anything is that there's radiation and radiation kills. That is an extremely narrow view.

First off, the issue in Japan wasn't caused solely by the earthquake, so simply being in the Ring of Fire doesn't mean that a nuclear plant near you will have a problem. The earthquake took out the main power at Japan's nuclear plant in question, and the tsunami took out the back up generator. Both of those systems have fail-safe devices, so under normal circumstances, they wouldn't fail. Which means that you need TWO disasters to cause a total power failure at a nuclear plant.

Secondly, you need to take into account the media. Sensationalism sells. People tune in. People buy newspapers. And the fear that sensationalism generates is used by marketers and suppliers to sell their products. As long as you think the world is ending, they've got you by the balls. So to speak.

All the hype about nuclear radiation and everything is given more power by people who repeat it, not knowing what it is they're talking about. Research it, please. I can almost guarantee you that you'll feel better about it. This isn't Chernobyl, and even if it was? You're safe. You're on the other side of the world. It's cold, I know, but it's true. You're not gonna get radiation poisoning. The most you have to worry about is economic changes due to a world power going to hell.

But like I said. It's not like that. This isn't Chernobyl, it's a completely different situation, years later, and with a different type of reactor, one that is far less volatile.

Honestly, we oughtta' make a separate thread for this... but I'll do a couple more myth-busts, preemptively.

1. Potassium Iodide. You really don't want it. Taking KI to treat rad poisoning is literally the same type of 'cure' as overdosing on Ethanol in order to 'cure' Methanol overdose. BOTH ARE EXTREMELY TOXIC, AND YOU CAN'T ACCURATELY MEASURE A 'SAFE AMOUNT TO TAKE'. The one just BARELY cancels the other. If you take KI without being irradiated first, you are basically telling your Thyroid to go eat shit and die. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->
Translation once more, if I've been unclear:
KI = poison.
Unless you are puking your guts out and losing hair and your skin is turning grey for obviously-radiation reasons... don't take it. Ever.

2. The supermoon (if you've been reading about that) seriously has nothing to do with this in any measurable way. Professional astrologists like hype, because it gets them money. If you want astrology you can 'trust', do your own. Please.

3. Michio Kaku is a theoretical PARTICLE physicist and astrophysicist. Just because he has an opinion about something and states it on TV does NOT make him an expert on nuclear plants, geology, or Japan itself. He likes hype, too, and the Discovery Channel and National Geographic REALLY like that he gets hype, because they use him a lot.

4. Mentioning Chernobyl = automatically untrustworthy. Hype.

5. Japan is very good at coping. Watch the news vids... do you see ANYBODY panicking, looting, or shoving in lines? Noooope. Unlike most developed countries, it is pretty much programmed into Japanese culture that respect and deference to others is paramount, and that panic is utterly unacceptable behaviour. Don't worry too much about their economy dying. In fact, expect it to increase. Consider how much outside monetary support is being fed DIRECTLY into their economy at this moment. Once this gets cleaned up, expect them to have a minor economic boom. Yeah, stocks there are going to drop for a few weeks immediately, but seriously... just watch them rise in a few months. This will probably be like the BP Spill in reverse. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->


EDIT: Chordal, I just saw your last post. It didn't show when I was posting earlier. Here is something said by a colleague of mine in another forum. It's... pretty close to what I already thought/felt/knew about the situation, and it comes backed up by actually working in close association with such power plants.

Jon'C said:

Quote:The only thing worse than the reporting about this incident is how you get all of the Greenpeace/vegan nutters coming out of the woodworks to whine about how dangerous nuclear power is while standing hip-deep in radioactive fly ash.

In all reality a meltdown has already happened. Nobody with a clue cares. The main concern at this point is preventing a steam or hydrogen explosion inside the pressure vessel, which is why they're venting radioactive gas.

A Chernobyl-like event literally cannot happen here.
The Chernobyl reactors have a positive void coefficient (meaning the coolant slows the nuclear reaction.) Control rods have to be inserted mechanically from the top and from the bottom. When the Soviets tried to shut down the reactor, the control rods were inserted too slowly and displaced too much water, which actually caused the reaction to speed up. The faster reaction caused more of the water to boil, which reduced the density of the water and caused a further increase in the reaction rate.
The Chernobyl reactors didn't have a containment vessel, they only had a pressure vessel. The pressure vessel wasn't designed to withstand the reaction speed and the lid blew off (a steam explosion.) This was followed by a hydrogen explosion which dispersed reactor contents.

The Japanese reactors are of American design. They have a negative void coefficient (meaning the coolant is the moderator.) Control rods are dropped very quickly under the force of gravity, initially suspended by electromagnets or a hydraulic/pneumatic system (think of something like air brakes, where power is required to keep the safety disengaged.) When the control rods are dropped it causes the reaction to slow down super-ultra fast, because the control rods are simultaneously absorbing neutrons and displacing the reaction moderator. Nuclear reactions continue from short-lived isotopes produced by the primary reaction, but they produce far less heat.

In addition to the pressure vessel, the Japanese reactors have a containment vessel. The containment vessel is designed to withstand a full core meltdown. To put this in perspective, the TMI incident involved roughly half of the uranium fuel in the reactor melting down -- it didn't even breach the *pressure* vessel! A meltdown's not a big deal. In fact, Plan 'B' in this whole situation is - and always has been - sealing off the containment vessel and letting the meltdown happen.

All of this talk of "Hail Mary" (**** anybody who uses sports metaphors for serious ****, **** them in the eye socket, bunch of infantile ****ing *******s) last-ditch efforts to prevent a meltdown are completely off-the-wall because in the end the only people who would be affected by a core meltdown are the shareholders who have to pay to dispose of an entire containment vessel instead of just some singed fuel rods.

My definition of meltdown, plain and simple: the reactor core overheats due to loss of cooling fluid or inability to circulate it. Radiation escapes into a containment vessel, and the core material burns off and/or degrades.

This is exactly what has happened. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->